It is true they are not imprisoned; but there may be, and there are, restraint and bondage outside the walls of the jail, as well as in.  Their power of earning is, in truth, taken away, their faculty of useful employment is paralyzed, and hope itself become extinguished.  Creditors, generally, are not inhuman or unkind; but there will be found some who hold on, and the more a debtor struggles to free himself, the more they feel encouraged to hold on.  The mode of reasoning is, that, the more honest the debtor may be, the more industrious, the more disposed to struggle and bear up against his misfortunes, the greater the chance is, that, in the end, especially if the humanity of others shall have led them to release him, their own debts may be finally recovered.

Now, in this state of our constitutional powers and duties, in this state of our laws, and with this actually existing condition of so many insolvents before us, it is not too serious to ask every member of the Senate to put it to his own conscience to say, whether we are not bound to exercise our constitutional duty.  Can we abstain from exercising it?  The States give to their own laws all the effect they can.  This shows that they desire the power to be exercised.  Several States have, in the most solemn manner, made known their earnest wishes to Congress.  If we still refuse, what is to be done?  Many of these insolvent persons are young men with young families.  Like other men, they have capacities both for action and enjoyment.  Are we to stifle all these for ever?  Are we to suffer all these persons, many of them meritorious and respectable, to be pressed to the earth for ever, by a load of hopeless debt?  The existing diversities and contradictions of State laws on the subject admirably illustrate the objects of this part of the Constitution, as stated by Mr. Madison; and they form that precise case for which the clause was inserted.  The very evil intended to be provided against is before us, and around us, and pressing us on all sides.  How can we, how dare we, make a perfect dead letter of this part of the Constitution, which we have sworn to support?  The insolvent persons have not the power of locomotion.  They cannot travel from State to State.  They are prisoners.  To my certain knowledge, there are many who cannot even come here to the seat of government, to present their petitions to Congress, so great is their fear that some creditor will dog their heels, and arrest them in some intervening State, or in this District, in the hope that friends will appear to save them, by payment of the debt, from imprisonment.